Colombia

On April 13, 2014, an Afro-Colombian community of approximately 300 families known as Puente Nayero did something unprecedented in Colombia’s largest port city of Buenaventura: they formed an urban Humanitarian Space. Criticizing the collusion of state security forces with paramilitaries, community members rejected the militarization of their oceanfront neighborhood and began resisting multinational companies trying to displace them from their homes.

On March 23rd, the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó celebrated its 18 year anniversary. This community of campesinos , located in the war-torn northwestern Urabá region of Colombia, refuses collaboration with any of country’s armed groups, including guerrilla, paramilitary, and State forces.

Labeled a humanitarian crisis by Human Rights Watch and featured in a report by Amnesty International earlier this year, Buenaventura and Puente Nayero have been gaining international attention. Even so, since the Humanitarian Space was established, more than fifty threats have been made toward community leaders and members, as well as toward the national and international accompaniers.

I had been told he was in Havana but that, because he was sick, he didn’t want to see anyone. I knew where he usually stayed: in a magnificent country house far from the city centre. I called on the phone and Mercedes, his wife, eased my doubts. She said, warmly: “Not at all, that’s to keep the pests away. Come over, ‘Gabo’ will be happy to see you.”

A meeting in Popayán, capital of the Cauca department, was the excuse for learning about a complex and violent reality. The war between the military, paramilitaries, guerrillas, and drug traffickers is intertwined with savage extractivism, with illegal mining its worst expression.

Although polling consistently showed that issues like poverty, crime, education and healthcare featured more prominently in voters’ minds than the peace process, the polarity of the main candidates’ positions on the latter issue largely eclipsed the slight differences between them on others. “The peace talks were the only way [for Santos] to distinguish himself from Zuluaga, especially in the second round,” said Restrepo. “It was also Zuluaga’s weak point. Historically Colombians have always wanted peaceful negotiations over war.”

Plans by Colombia’s state-owned firm Ecopetrol to drill for gas in the north of the country have been suspended following opposition from the indigenous U’wa people. An organization representing 17 U´wa communities, Asou’wa, raised the alarm about the drilling in late February reporting the arrival of “an avalanche of heavy machinery” and an increasing army presence.

Holding down an occupation for five months isn’t easy. Doing so in Colombia, even less so. But members of the community of Héctor Alirio Martínez in the municipality of Fortul, near the border with Venezuela, have raised the stakes even higher: they’re occupying land owned by the Ministry of Defense. The 100 hectare terrain now spotted with wood and plastic homes was slated to become a large military base.

After nine years of research and illustration, the Beehive Design Collective launched their latest graphic campaign, Mesoamérica Resiste, in December of last year. Mesoamérica Resiste is the third installment in a trilogy about globalization in the Americas (following earlier graphics about the FTAA and Plan Colombia). This graphic campaign was directly researched with communities from Mexico, Central America, and Colombia who are impacted by the Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project, a neoliberal regional development plan formerly known as Plan Puebla Panama.

Facing the reality of disappearing ecosystems, decreasing populations and the extinction of species that the country is dealing with, it is time for the Colombian State’s decision-makers to implement actions immediately in order to stop this devastation before it is too late, according to four environmental experts who have given recommendations from their fields in the program Su Madre Naturaleza [Your Mother Nature] by Canal Capital.